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Every business I know has a key leader. Most times
it is an appointed person such as the president or CEO, or it's
often an owner in an entrepreneurial business. Whoever it is, the
picture is clear-cut: If the person leads, management will follow.
Many leaders today will tell you that they are
team-oriented or want their people to be self-managers. This model
can work if it goes beyond lip service. For people to self-manage,
the environment cannot be dictatorial and people cannot feel frightened
to fail or to make decisions.
One of the key ingredients to creating more positive,
self-driven organizations is to have leaders constantly asking themselves
some questions regarding the progress of their businesses and the
people they employ:
What
are your people best at?
Too many times, leaders do not let their people
excel at what they're supposed to do. How many salespeople do sales
only a small percentage of their work time? They are doing paperwork
or other business-related extra-curricular activities but are not
selling. · What do your people need help with? How can we make their
personal and work lives easier and, therefore, improve efficiency?
What are the weak points throughout the work process? What training
is needed for today and tomorrow?
What
standards have you set for your people?
If you want a clean and efficient work environment,
everyone has to know and believe what is priority. · What are the
different personalities of your people? How flexible are you? If
managers treat everyone the same, you will have chaos. One of the
biggest challenges for any leader is to model how to manage different
people differently.
How
do you let your people know of your expectations and their responsibilities?
Does everyone have a job description yet know when
to be flexible and cross over to help in other areas? Are people
rewarded if they meet expectations and, if they don't, do they know
that there are some consequences?
How
do they want to be managed?
Simply ask. People want evaluation-both for praise
and correction. Also, if there is not an educational plan along
with an evaluation plan, then evaluation is almost worthless.
Leadership needs to understand that they are the
role models for the business. Who they are and how they act will
be remembered much longer than the words they say.
Most people want strong leadership. When leadership
only dances in place, the people won't move their feet.
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